Monday, October 18, 2010

Africa Update by Mr. Intensity

Yesterday I took Mr. Intensity on an ice cream date with the sheer purpose of getting information out of him. I asked all kinds of questions about his trip. He didn't have much to say. This morning before leaving for Comm. Central, he decided to dictate the below narrative for class (before seeing any of the pictures). He will read this to twenty other first graders today, and give them all a Rwandan coin.

I liked Rwanda, Africa, and the bananas and passion fruit too. The outside of a passion fruit looks like purple punch, it is round and hard, about the size of a black walnut - you have to cut it open then scoop out the seeds. The insides look like swirling swirling roots. The seeds are really sweet.

passion fruit

We also ate rice, meat, sauce, chips (which we would call french fries), and fish. My dad ate a lot of avocado. We had some really good bread. There was no fast food in Rwanda.

The power went out about every day.

The roads were one lane, not two lanes like America. Most roads were bumpy and made of dirt. One time we were riding and I had to go without a seat belt because there was another person in the car. There were six people and only five seats. One time a person (Alphonse, the usual driver) had to ride outside the truck.

We slept under a net because mosquitoes could give you malaria. In the mornings, a bird called “inyamanza” would wake us up. In Swahili, it means: be quiet! This is the sound it would make - AH-AH-AH!!

At the guest house, our neighbors were David and Liz from England. We had tea because they have tea in the afternoons in England.

with Ms. Arrylia, who gave him the t-shirt

I liked Ms. Arrylia, the teacher of the second grade class. I played football at the giant field. There they call soccer “football.”

When we went to Alphonse’s family’s village (the college student we know in Little Rock), at least thirty Rwandan kids crowded around the door and just stared at me while I sat inside the house. If an adult went out the door, the kids would scatter like a puff of smoke. They were staring at me because they had never ever seen a white man before!

We went to a game park, which is an animal park, kind of like a zoo except no fence. We saw giraffe, warthog, impala (which is like an antelope except it runs faster), waterbuck, white fish eagle, hippopotamus, and crocodiles. And lots and lots of baboons! There was a tree there covered in thorns. It was called an Acacia tree.

huge bird, about 4 feet tall

babboon

hippos

White Fish Eagle

My dad taught a class and I went with him to his school, once. There I saw a drum as tall as me, and one African painted maraca. We sang, “Great is Thy Faithfulness” in English. I ate lunch and had tea with Dad there.

Dad's class

At one of the churches we didn’t sing because they didn’t translate. (Julie's note: they were there FOUR hours.)

We also went to Kenya and spent two days there. After we got off the airplane, we saw a whole lot of giraffes and a whole lot of zebras. I made friends with Morris and Francis, their parents also work with FamilyLife. Together we built blanket forts.

In the Belgium airport, my grandma bought me a dinosaur kit except I couldn’t play with it because we didn’t have scissors or a knife to open the package. (Julie writes: He told me yesterday, but didn’t want to include this factoid in the report, “Because it would probably embarrass me” that “I learned that Mawgaw’s real name isn’t Pam. It is Pamela.”)

On the plane home, I slept the longest. We watched videos on the plane. In the whole trip, we had four flights that were eight hours long and two flights that were two hours.

--John Isaac, age 6

Julie adds - here is a picture of Hubby's arm with a crazy rash and yellow skin at the height of his sickness. He continues to improve but still has a fever and aches every other day.